Nudge your way to sustainable consumption I Miniconference 9 November 2017

Numerous surveys have shown that consumers increasingly want to buy more responsible products and support businesses that behave socially responsibly – they want to put their money where their heart is.

However, there is often a gap between consumers’ good intentions to buy responsibly and their actual buying behaviour. So how can a sustainable company help its customers bridge this intention gap?

"Although people often behave unfavourable in many aspects of life – e.g. in terms of recycling or overconsumption – it doesn’t mean that we don’t intent to change. But in order to do so, good design solutions that account for basic human instincts, flaws and habits are necessary," explains chief behavioural designer, Sille Krukow.

Take Sille Krukow's study on beach litter as an example. Prior to the study, trash cans were scarce at the beach and there was only one type, which meant that the trash wasn’t sorted and sometimes never even made its way to the trash can.

To increase the possibility that the beachgoers would start sorting their trash, Sille Krukow replaced the few, single trash cans with three trash cans in different colours. As she explains, this makes people intuitively understand that some kind of system exist and they try to understand what it means.

Showing people what you want them to do – instead of what they shouldn’t do – has a much better effect. Sille Krukow therefore put stickers on top of each trash can, showing which type of beach related trash should go in each trash can and made sure that trash cans were visible from the entire beach.

After just one week, everything was sorted correctly – an example of how we can use human instincts to design better behaviour.

Learn more at the about behavioural design & CSR

At the upcoming miniconference “Sustainable Customer Engagement” 9 November 2017, Sille Krukow will be sharing more practical cases and advice on how companies can use behavioural design methodologies and tools in support of sustainable consumption.

Get a preview on Silles expertise and approach before the miniconference by watching her speech from TEDx Talks Copenhagen, 2013 concerning how changing human behavior can make the world a greener and better place.